Muslim boxer Omar Shaick was yesterday handed a two-year ban by Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority officials for refusing to give a urine sample because his religion prohibits him from exposing his genitals to strangers.

"Canada could make exactly the same claim. The Canadians could say that the Lomonosov ridge is part of the Canadian shelf, which means Russia should in fact belong to Canada, together with the whole of Eurasia."

— Sergey Priamikov, the international co-operation director of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg, on the Kremlin's recent conclusion that it owns part of the oil-rich North Pole